Nanotubes born inside a mini-fireball

PLAYING with explosives has ever been a thrill for chemists - and now they have a new excuse to do it. The debris of a violent reaction, similar to the industrial process that creates artificial diamonds, has proved to be a rich source of carbon nanotubes. These curious carbon structures look like rolls of atomic-scale chicken wire and have oddly diverse applications, ranging from reinforcing materials to quantum computing.

Zhenping Zhu and colleagues at the Institute of Coal Chemistry in Taiyuan, China, describe the explosions in Chemical Communications (DOI: 10.1039/b207166e). They ignited a mixture of paraffin and picric acid, a common explosive, to produce a mini-fireball that reached temperatures of 900 °C. The resulting shock wave generated pressures as high as 400 atmospheres. The paraffin and picric acid molecules decomposed and their carbon atoms rearranged themselves into nanotubes, with the help of a cobalt catalyst.

That delicate nanotubes can grow ...

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